Violet Voss Holy Grail

Those of you who follow me on social media will have been waiting for this since I posted that it had finally arrived, it had taken over a week for it to clear customs and of course did so with a charge on it which caused further delays… No fun!

Anyway, I shall stop whining about the vagaries of the postal system and importation and get on with reviewing this beautiful palette!

The palette contains 20 pans of coordinated warm, mainly neutral, shades in a mixture of finishes. There are some mattes, some satins and some metallics. The palette it’s self is very sleek and slimline and made of relatively good quality matte look cardboard. There’s a mirrored surface inside the lid too in case you really need one when you’re out.

The names of the shades are very entertaining with names like “R U Kitten Me”, “Awesome Sauce” and “On Fleek” and were one of the many things that attracted me to this palette as well as the rich tones of the bottom row.
There are a couple of great transition shades in this palette; “Thanks A Latte”, the aptly named “Transition” and “Bestie”.

Some of the darker mattes are a bit of a let down in terms of colour pay-off for me, namely
“Brownie Points” and “Teddy Bear”. These were not as soft or as easy to work with, quite powdery in fact. On the good side though they are buildable so not a total loss.

I very quickly developed some favourites from this palette and they are “Toffee”, “On Fleek”, “Cranberry Splash” and “Wine N Dine”. Toffee swatched amazingly with barely any pressure, it’s so metallic and shiny, probably the top shade in the palette for me.

Is it worth $52..? I’m still wondering on that one. It does work out at only $2.60 per eye shadow which is not bad and if you got with the 20% off code as I did then that drops to $2.10 It is however, it turns out, made in China. Make of that what you will.
I think this palette has suffered somewhat from the combination of the sheer amount of hype surrounding it and its somewhat contrived low availability meaning it’s quite hard for it to live up to people’s expectations.

The Swatches

Top RowMy camera just hasn’t picked up the orange of “Hashtag” on the end for some reason.

2nd Row

Absolutely adore “Toffee” right in the middle there.

3rd Row

This row is stunning with the possible exception of the pale pink “So Jelly”

Bottom Row

See what I mean about those darker mattes on the left there?

These are finger swatches done where possible with one swipe or if needed a second one on top. I don’t use primer for any of my swatches. Larger images are available over on my Flickr page if you want a better view.I did swatch a couple of shades using a brush next to a quick one swipe finger swatch so you can get a better idea of what they might look like when applied and blended on the eye. These two are “Transition” and “Hashtag”. “Transition” behaves pretty much as I’d expect but “Hashtag” behaves completely differently when applied with the brush in this way and loses all it’s vibrancy. I think this is a shade that will have to be patted on very carefully with a finger and not blended too much at all if you want to keep the vibrancy.

I'm Kath; a qualified beauty therapist and make-up artist. I'm currently studying media make-up and special effects to add some more strings to my bow. I'm a "make-up geek" as my friends say and am also a bit obsessed with nail polish too! I use this site to share my love of make-up and beauty and skin care education.
I'm also a bendy-EDSer and a wheelchair user.
Portfolio website coming soon!
bendybeauty.com